Infanticide and Abortion

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

Robert George is back to the culture war, with a post about two relatively obscure Australian ethicists (Alberto Guibilini and Francesca Minerva) who published a short sketch of an argument for why infanticide ought to be allowed under any moral and legal regime that allows abortion. George sees these two new voices as evidence of a liberal trend towards supporting infanticide, and takes the opportunity to for some cheap partisan shots: "Who will raise their voices against this madness? Plenty of conservatives will, of course. Will liberal voices be raised? I hope so." (The deliberately closed comments on his post suggest that he's not actually interested in the answer to that latter question or in anything that might resemble, say, academic debate.)

But on the charitable assumption that you're going for something more valuable than a few extra votes for Republicans this November, George: yes, I'm a supporter of the right to legal abortion and I oppose Guibilini and Minerva's stance on infanticide. Their foundation of the right to life on the self-value a being has for itself is unsupportable. In addition, the right to life isn't the only reason to ban abortion or infanticide. I reject Guibilini and Minerva's conclusion that there is nothing balancing against a right to abortion or infanticide, and I base the right to legal abortion on considerations that do not apply after birth. In addition, the Guibilini and Minerva paper has some gaping holes (who gets to decide on infanticide? The mother, as some of their language suggests? But why? And why should the harm to the parents of putting a child up for adoption be allowed to trump the social harms of adoption, even if we posit no right to life for the newborn?) There's a lot to be criticized in the paper.

But what's most disappointing about George's post isn't his par-for-the-course dirty partisan fighting, or his typical out-of-proportion expansion of a single short (3 pages, folks) paper by two individuals into evidence for the coming moral degeneracy of a large segment of society. No, what's most disappointing is the moral closed-mindedness evidenced by George in his suggestion that a commitment to legal abortion necessarily implies a commitment to legal infanticide. George has fallen into that all-too-typical trap of the hyper-partisan: he sees one weak argument in support of a position which he despises, and assumes it's the justification used by everyone with whom he disagrees. The fact that a few individuals who support abortion have found that their specific reasons for doing so lead them to a support for infanticide doesn't mean at all that that progression is the natural outcome of all reasons for supporting legal abortion.

In other words, contra George, if supporters of legal abortion suddenly awoke from our haze of irrationality and rose to the levels of rational understanding that he occupies, we wouldn't necessarily find that our beliefs force us to support infanticide.

(Of course, George's failure to acknowledge more than a single path through the forest might be deliberate: a tactical move to best secure victory for his particular moral views. But even though he sees this as a war, I'll be charitable and presume ineptitude over disingenuity.)

UPDATE: Since I wrote this, but before I published it, other writers at the same blog have also published commentary on the article. Most of the same criticisms above apply to those posts also, though some moreso than others. Here are the links: Robert Hockett and again, another by Robert George (demonstrating a love of questions which he doesn't want to hear answers to), and Mike Scaperlanda (the only one to actually open comments).

UPDATE 2: Another post by Robert Hockett that I missed. This one goes into a much more substantial discussion, and avoids many of the above issues, though he still overstates the importance of "personhood" arguments to the abortion right. But still, and even though the post is a bit rambly, it's worth reading over. I don't think I buy his quasi-Platonic reliance on forms of life which are instantiated in individual beings (and the discussion of the 'value' of the lives at issue is basically irrelevant to my views on legal access to abortion), but it is intriguing.

Qur'ans Burned: Satorum Says "So What?"

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

In case you hadn't heard, last Tuesday American military forces put a (or many, depending on the account) Qur'an(s) in a burn pit (allegedly accidentally, but I have my doubts given recent events) at the main NATO base in Afghanistan. Predictably, the event has sparked outrage and protests in Afghanistan (and by Muslims everywhere), which have lead to at least 10 deaths. Luckily, the Obama Administration took exactly the right course and apologized for our culture's idiocy. But, again predictably, Republicans don't like it when President Obama does something. According to Santorum,

Say it’s unfortunate…but to apologize for something that was not an intentional act is something that the president of the United States in my opinion should not have done...I think it shows weakness.

I don't know how Santorum was raised, but even if the burning was not an intentional act of disrespect, apology is exactly the right reaction, at a minimum. As decent human beings, we apologize for mistakes all the time. We apologize to show our sympathy and to demonstrate that we'll try to do better in the future. This was not an "unfortunate" occurrence, like a natural famine in their country. It was a mistake brought on by our ineptitude and idiocy, if not a deliberate act of malice. And we ought to show our remorse for that.

Are riots and death a severe overreaction to the burning of a book? Of course, and no sane person denies that. (Of course, no sane person denies that attacks are also a severe overreaction to the burning of a flag, but that didn't stop Republican Klan members from trying to protect those who commit aggravated battery against flag burners.) I know the Golden Rule doesn't get much play among the religious right these days, but maybe Santorum (the 'paragon' of religious candidates) should pay a little more attention to it: we must show respect for others if we expect respect in return.

Of course, Santorum isn't alone. Newt also criticized the show of respect by President Obama, and Mitt once again demonstrated his lack of an emotional capacity. As far as I can tell, Ron Paul's been silent on the issue: better than his rivals, but not exactly a ringing endorsement of his moral fortitude, especially given how clear cut this is. In other words: vote Republican this fall if you want America to have the moral development of a five-year-old.

Democrats for...Santorum?

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

The Michigan primary is today (if you vote in Michigan and haven't gone to the polls yet, do — they close at 8 pm EST, I believe, and any registered voter can vote). The buzz is that the Michigan primaries will be rife with strategic voting by Democrats trying to mess up the Republican race. I know that the desire to do that exists, at least to a certain extent, among some Michigan Democrats. It's been exacerbated, apparently, by Santorum's active recruitment of Democrats to vote against Mitt as punishment for failing to support the auto bailout. (I'll remind any Democrats so-inclined that voting for Congressman Paul is also a vote against Romney. All but two of the delegates will be awarded based on the winners in each Congressional district, so Congressman Paul need not carry the state to hurt both Romney and Santorum.)

A few points need to be made about Democrats (and independents, Democratically-leaning independents, unaligned liberals, etc) voting in the Republican primary: strategic voting is unethical. Serious participation and voting for the best candidate is perfectly ethical and even, I would argue, an ethical imperative in a democracy, just like voting in the general election.

But if you're not convinced that strategic voting (voting for a weak candidate like Santorum to improve President Obama's chances of reelection in November) is unethical, it's a terrible strategy for anyone who cares about the country rather than empty partisan victories. A few points:

1. Santorum is definitely a weaker general election candidate than Mitt. But that doesn't mean he'll necessarily lose. As scary as it is, there's a large enough group of people in this country who are irrationally angry at the president to vote for anyone else, even Santorum. And while President Obama would be significantly better for this country than Mitt would, Mitt would also be significantly better than Santorum.
2. Elections are about more than just the presidential race. A Santorum win would encourage a significant number of Congressional candidates to swing right: and we're not talking the obstructionist-but-somewhat-sane-Tea-Party-right. We're talking hardcore social conservative right. Even if that results in a better result for Democrats (more seats in Congress) we've seen the damage that a small but committed and crazy group of ultra-conservatives can do in Congress.
3. Elections are also about more than winners. They're about setting a message and affecting politics in this country for years to come. The more votes Santorum gets, even if he doesn't win, the more the national conversation will turn backwards. DADT may well end up back on the table. We won't be talking about repealing DOMA, we'll be talking about federal laws to prevent states from recognizing same-sex marriages within their own borders. We'll be talking preemptive nuclear strikes against Iran and bans on contraceptives for teenagers.
4. And campaigns influence each other. The better Santorum does, the more Romney will have to swing right in order to counter him. And if Santorum wins, President Obama will be drawn far more to the right during the general election. Even if it guaranteed an Obama win, does it mean much if Obama ends up running on a conservative platform?

So, Democrats who haven't yet voted in Michigan (or who are going to vote in future primaries): don't vote strategically. Vote for the person you think would make the best President. And if that person's Santorum rather than Congressman Paul or Fred Karger, I have to wonder why you call yourself a Democrat.

Canadian SC Rejects Ridiculous Parental Rights Claim

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

Richard Myers reports on an example of sanity in the judicial resolution of a religious freedom case. Unfortunately, it doesn't come from an American court. Apparently some Canadian parents asserted a "right" to control the education of their children that extended to active censorship of ideas their children hear. In this case, it was about exposure to dreaded moral relativism.

The court roundly (and rightly) shut them down.

Exposing children to a comprehensive presentation of various religions without forcing the children to join them does not constitute an indoctrination of students that would infringe the freedom of religion of L and J.  Furthermore, the early exposure of children to realities that differ from those in their immediate family environment is a fact of life in society.  The suggestion that exposing children to a variety of religious facts in itself infringes their religious freedom or that of their parents amounts to a rejection of the multicultural reality of Canadian society and ignores the Quebec government’s obligations with regard to public education.

Robert George: Democracy is Terrorism

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

I usually don't link to thinks just because they're pathetically amusing. But every once in a while, something's just too bad to pass up. Such is this WSJ opinion piece by extreme right-wing culture warrior Robert George and law professor O. Carter Snead. In it, they take on the unenviable task of trying to spin the Susan G. Komen Foundation's catastrophic attempt to insert itself into the abortion debate.

I guess they did as well as they possibly could have with the material they were given, but their choice of topic does lead one to question their sanity a bit. The ridiculousness of their core claim — that Komen defunded Planned Parenthood in an effort to "extricate itself from the culture wars" and "be neutral in the controversy over abortion" — make it clear how much they're grasping at straws. One doesn't remain "neutral" on abortion by making crucial cancer funding dependent on unrelated political views. Using an issue like breast cancer research to push the anti-choice agenda is diving headfirst into the culture wars, not extricating oneself from them.

Much of the rest of George and Snead's article consists in the repitition of trite right-wing memes about Planned Parenthood that aren't worth getting into here. But there is one more thing worth pointing out: George and Snead hate democracy — at least when liberals use it.

In a screed reminiscient of virulent anti-Semites who suggest that there's a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, George and Snead bemoan the Planned Parenthood 'machine' that instantly rose up to defend the organization, that "took breast-cancer victims as hostages," and that apparently used other terrible, terrible methods to extort money out of the poor, defenseless charity. As further evidence of these terrorism tactics, George and Snead did their best to dredge up every instance in which Planned Parenthood has had an influence on politics. But what are those tactics they're objecting to? Ordinary Americans tweeting, posting on Facebook, making calls...and most of it spontaneous. We're the terrorists, folks. Us and our keyboards.

Gentlemen, I know it's uncomfortable to realize that a large swath of America disagrees with you. I know it's easier to demonize your opponents: to imagine that they're a small, powerful, evil, liberal machine that manipulates the power structure to defeat your virtuous ideals. But the thing you're really scared of? It's called democracy.

Arizona GOP Debate

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

Here are some scattered thoughts on the last Republican debate before Super Tuesday:

Mitt came out swinging with some serious misrepresentations of moderates and liberals. It's the kind of thing that may play well in the Republican primary, but it's the reason why independents and Democrats should watch these contests: to get an idea of the candidates' true characters. For instance, Romney bewailed the progressive sexual education movement in this country (one that had huge support among Americans even six years ago) as opposition to teaching kids about abstinence. In reality, very few people oppose schools mentioning abstinence and teaching about its benefits — even my public school in a very liberal town encouraged abstinence in its health classes. What everyone except the radical extremist right (well represented among Republican politicians) opposes is abstinence-only education: the idea that by pretending pre-marital sex doesn't exist, we'll improve health outcomes for young children.

Mitt also had some bewildering statements about religion, including the proposition that religious institutions should be able to unilaterally declare a position 'ministerial' and thus escape all labor law regulation. Even the Supreme Court didn't go that far in Hosanna-Tabor. And he characterized the recent kerfuffle over birth control coverage as among the most serious threats to religious liberty in this nation's history. Maybe Newt can give him a history lesson?

• Permoli v. Municipality No. 1 of New Orleans, regarding a law that forbade open casket funerals in Catholic churches.
• Minersville School District v. Gobitis, in which the Supreme Court held that people could be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance in violation of their religious beliefs.
• Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, a case involving a New York law which purported to decide who controlled a religious organization.
• Welsh v. United States, a case in which the government tried to restrict conscientious objector status to those who hold specifically religious beliefs.

And those are just a few that I found flipping through the table of contents of my copy of First Amendment Stories (which I really should read some day). So we can talk about the religious liberty issues surrounding an insurance mandate to cover contraceptives. But let's not pretend that the luxury to even have that discussion represents anything other than a markedly better position for religious institutions than in the past.

Santorum brought some disguised religious crazy to the party. He (and the others somewhat, but mostly he) argued that there was a huge disadvantage to children born out of wedlock. That sounds innocuous enough: it's generally preferable for children to be raised in two parent households. But combine it with the Republican (especially Santorumite) opposition to marriage equality, and you're left with an opposition to same-sex couples raising children. Republicans need to decide what marriage is: is it a sacred religious institution which the government shouldn't be involved in, or is it a social apparatus that helps enable a solid economic foundation for raising a family? Their words belie their...other words.

Santorum also seems to think he's running in 2004. When criticized for a vote for NCLB, he defended his actions with "it was a top priority of President Bush. Politics is a team sport, folks." Granted, that's an attitude that's worked remarkably well for the Congressional Republicans in the last few years. I'm not sure there's ever been such a successful obstructionist team effort in the history of Congress. But it's not what Americans want out of politics. It's the exact opposite of the message that carried President Obama to a resounding victory in 2008, even if he hasn't lived up to that promise. For Santorum to proudly spew his support of old-style team politics is revealing about the kind of presidency he would run were he to be elected.

Newt had some revealing statements when he moved past the canned 20-second bits. For instance, he spent some time talking about how we live in an "era of total warfare" in which "we're all more at risk than we ever have been." We need to take national security risks seriously, but we can't let them consume us the way they did in the fall of 2001 and the years following. That type of rhetoric leads to precisely the state of fear and the attitude towards war that erodes — no, destroys — our civil liberties.

Congressman Paul had a strong debate overall, but he did have a moment that betrayed the holes in the radical "free"-market ideology he espouses. In the midst of talking about how it's the role of government to "support" contracts, not to "regulate" them, he expressed support for the bankruptcy system. That's reasonable enough, since there's no one crazy enough to suggest that we should do away with bankruptcy protections.

But bankruptcy is the epitome of government regulation of (and interference with) contracts. Government power is used to sever the obligatory power of contracts, and people don't get what they originally contracted to get. Is there a free market solution? Of course. Theoretically speaking, if we didn't have bankruptcy law we'd have a more "efficient" allocation of debt responsibilities. People could negotiate quasi-bankruptcy provisions into all their contracts. They'd get the protections that were worth it to them given the costs.

But bankruptcy law, like so much of the rest of important government regulation of the "free"-market system, recognizes an important fact: the "free" market, when left to its own devices, does bad things. Individuals wouldn't be able to understand or negotiate meaningful bankruptcy protections with large corporations. Cognitive biases would lead people to think they needed less protection than they actually did. There wouldn't be an effective way to balance the interests of all of an individual's (or a business's) creditors, because there wouldn't be a good way for them to organize. And the inevitable end result is a perpetual lower class stuck in debt-slavery because there's no legal way to get out from under constantly mounting debt.

Not an encouraging night for any, like me, who were hoping that the looming general election would encourage some of the demagoguing candidates to shift center. We may be in for 7 more months of the kind of ridiculously skewed political discourse that only America can have.

The GOP's War on Women

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

[Trigger warning for discussion of rape analogies and rape.]

The Republican Party has never been great for women (which helps explain the numbers), but a few recent events are shocking even from the GOP. First, take the transvaginal ultrasound bill in Virginia. Jon Stewart explains it well (though, as his show goes, this isn't that great):

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Punanny State - Virginia's Transvaginal Ultrasound Bill
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His comparison is spot on: this is mandated rape or, at least, a serious invasion of the bodily autonomy of women. (The argument can be made, like with TSA pat downs, that this isn't rape because the person performing the procedure isn't doing so with a sexual intent. That's a small comfort to the victims. And anyways, this is about the abuse of state power with the threat of bodily invasion to try to force women to allow an unwanted pregnancy to control their bodies for the next nine months. Sounds like rape to me.)

Luckily, the public reaction when Republican intentions came to light forced Governor McDonnell to back down. The version of the bill that ended up passing requires an external transabdominal ultrasound, which I understand is basically non-invasive. (If you know more about this than I do, please correct me in the comments.) But the fact that the Republican party tried to discourage abortions by requiring women to be raped before having them speaks for itself, regardless of the final outcome.

Then, of course, there seems to have been a rise in the GOP's willingness to trivialize rape through ridiculous comparisons. Examples abound (that one's quoting an actual legal brief filed with the Supreme Court — pages 4 and 22) all across the internet (including in the clip above). Liberals also make ridiculous rape analogies, of course, and that's not alright either. But the GOP seems to love it lately.

And then we have people like Liz Trotta on Fox "News", who derided efforts to protect women in the military from rape as the manipulations of radical feminists.

Some highlights: She suggested it was ridiculous for people to "want to be warriors and victims at the same time." Beyond the absurdity of suggesting that anyone wants to be a victim, this plays directly into some of the worst stereotypes about rape: that someone who was raped is defenseless, weak, and worthless, and incapable of being a "warrior." It's simply not true, and rhetoric like this only encourages the underreporting of rape by victims who are embarrassed about the event.

She asked: "What did they expect" other than women serving in the military being raped? I don't know: maybe that we had a stellar military that was the pride of our country and would do everything to respect each of the soldiers who risk their lives to defend us?

It would be hard for most normal people to put a price limit on preventing rape in the military. But for Liz Trotta, $113 million (0.017% of a $680 billion annual Defense Department budget) is too much. "The feminists have directed them to spend a lot of money: Sexual counselors all over the place, victim's advocates, sexual response coordinators" (all said in a derisive voice).

And here's the kicker: "So you have this whole bureaucracy upon bureaucracy being built up with all kinds of levels of people to support women in the military who are now being raped too much." One more time: women are being raped too much. They are receiving more than the optimal amount of rape. The rape levels are above acceptable outcomes. Seriously now.

I'll hand it to that Fox News anchor. He actually sounded reasonable for a minute there, suggesting that people who risk their lives in the military should be protected from rape. Her response (and I kid you not):

"I thought the mission of the Army and the Navy and the four services was to defend us, not the people who are fighting the war." Anchor: "We certainly want the people fighting the war to be protected from anything illegal." Her: "*laughs* Nice try Erik."

You can't make this up. The anchor even gave her the opportunity to come back on and apologize after people saw this and realized what a complete jackass she was. The clip that follows is worth watching for amusement's sake (the anchor doggedly tries to have a conversation with her, but she sticks to reading a script in a very self-important voice), but in eight and a half minutes I didn't hear her address any of the issues with her original statement or apologize once. She didn't even claim to be misunderstood and attempt to clarify her remarks. She just went off on a tangential rant about feminists.

But why address her previous statements? Women in the military are being raped too much, and it's the fault of the feminists who want them to be able to serve in the military. She said exactly what she meant to say.

Prop 8 Struck Down, But Not Much More

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

By now you've almost certainly heard that a 9th Circuit panel affirmed (2-1) the district court opinion striking down Prop 8, California's virulently anti-gay ballot initiative from 2008. Here's a summary and here's the full opinion, both uploaded to Google Docs because apparently the federal government's websites can't deal with the fact that people might want to actually look at what's on them.

The opinion is certainly good news, as it'll give people in California a more equal right to marry. The panel also gave a unanimous smack-down to the absurd and insulting right-wing idea that gay judges with partners cannot address the marriage issue impartially. But the severe limitations of the opinion are also important to note. The opinion applies almost solely to the facts surrounding Prop 8, an amendment to reclassify marriage between same-sex partners differently from opposite-sex marriage, while leaving the previously guaranteed benefits of same-sex marriage in place.

The logic of the opinion rests firmly on the fact that none of the oft-posited justifications for a ban on marriage equality were even possible to raise here, because Prop 8 removed no rights but symbolic ones.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the symbolic rights aren't important. When a state lets a man and a woman get married, but two women can only get a "civil union," the state is legitimizing one relationship over the other. That's a non-trivial harm, and it's important to fight it by either letting same-sex couples get married or offering only civil unions to all couples. The CA9 opinion rightly recognizes this.

But what the logic does mean is that a proposition that removed more rights may have fared better under the court's analysis. We can't know for sure, because the court specifically avoided the broader issue of whether same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry, full stop. But if Prop 8 had, in addition to redefining marriage, forbidden adoption by same-sex couples, at least one hurdle would have been overcome in the Ninth Circuit, and it may well have been found constitutional.

This opinion is definitely a victory for same-sex couples in California. But it may well end up being the beginning of a defeat for the broader equality movement. The stakes of the litigation have been shifted significantly in the anti-equality group's favor: a ruling for their side at the Supreme Court (or the full Ninth Circuit, though that's less likely) could have significant repurcussions for equality around the country. A ruling in favor of equality from the Supreme Court, however, will likely be as limited as the Ninth Circuit opinion, with few effects in the rest of the country.

So, celebrate for a day. But this is hardly the end, and it's not the best place we could be in.

Pete Hoekstra the Racist

(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

I don't usually do this until much closer to the election, but I'm going to throw an early endorsement out there for Debbie Stabenow for Senate from Michigan. If you're considering voting for Pete Hoekstra, this racism ought to be enough to change your mind.